To set the stage, I have a reasonable amount of experience as a traveler. Additionally, I am a "student" of travel and read articles about packing light, finding good hotels, best time to book airline flights, what to see when I'm in ### etc. So there is an upcoming trip scheduled for about 4 months away and the plan was to fly open jaw. I started looking at a number of booking sites for airfare in December (about 6 months out) but didn't find anything very satisfactory. About 2 weeks ago, I used a booking site I don't use often and there were 3-4 flights that looked decent. I wasn't sure if the prices would go up or down so I didn't book that day. Although I have read articles that suggest that it is a myth not to save cookies from booking sites, I did not save cookies from this particular site. Two days later I went back and the "best" flight was not listed. However, I found another decent one. I went back 2-3 days later and the only flights listed (by the particular airline--KLM--which seemed to have the best flights) were not particularly good. The next day NO KLM flights were listed. So I tracked down a flight similar to the best one I found on booking site on the KLM site and purchased it at the cost of about $75 more than it had been listed previously Yesterday, a Friday after I had booked on Monday, I checked the original booking site on a computer at my friend's house and all of the original flights were listed including the one similar to the one I had booked through KLM. When I got home, I checked on my computer using the same booking site and again, there were no KLM flights listed. I had not logged into my account on the booking site either the computer at my friend's house or my own. I was just doing a blind search. Also, after I did the first search on the booking site 2 weeks ago and subsequent searches, I deleted the cookies from that site. So my question: What the heck happened? How/why was the booking site not showing my any KLM flights while the KLM site did.....and so do other booking sites. (the reason I did not use another booking site is the original booking site and the KLM site both offered a return flight which I thought was good for me.... other booking sites did not offer that particular return flight.) Boy, I sure find this puzzling and I hope my explanation of what happened was clear. If anyone has any thoughts about what was going on, I'd like to hear them. TIA
Posted by
2081 posts
Ray,
I notice the same thing but dont put any stock into it.
happy trails.
Posted by
California 🦋
5226 posts
Strange... That's one reason I always book directly with the airline carriers.
Posted by
OP
Tigard, OR, USA
1068 posts
Well, just one of those things I guess. Makes it even harder to "guess" when you book your flight.
Posted by
L'Occitanie, France
10215 posts
IMHO, if you actually clicked on one of the "low" fares when you saw it and followed it through to payment, it might very well pop up at the moment of payment that the fare is no longer available, and suggest another route and fare.
That has happened to me--one of many reasons I book directly through the carrier, and see that you did too. Did you do an internet search to see if there are a lot of complaints about this particular booking service?
Posted by
PA
2746 posts
Second bets' response- I have seen that "No longer available" on a few of these sites. Which would mean that it was not available to begin with. I can recount my own experience last year with one of these 800 number sites, what i booked, they did not give me. Unfortunately, i did not read the confirmation fully when it came, since once I saw the first flight it was simply not conceivable to me that the rest of it would not have been what I selected. Amazingly, they put me on a connecting flight that they were not even offering.
For a better search of flights, use Ita matrix (https://matrix.itasoftware.com/), which is a flight search engine and not a ticket agent.
Posted by
OP
Tigard, OR, USA
1068 posts
Interesting thought. It wasn't so much the fare was cheap....... about $75 cheaper than booking on the airline site, but rather it disappeared from the generic booking site. After I booked on the airline site I picked my seats and the planes were a little over half empty. The other interesting piece is that other generic booking sites continued to show KLM flights, just not the ones which worked the best for me.......while the generic booking site which had shown the good sites stopped showing any KLM flights. Just a puzzle to me. ps: I bookmarked matrix and will try it for my next flight. Thanks